During the early industrial revolution, machines were integrated into the work environment to speed up the manufacturing of goods. The utilization of machines allowed production numbers to increase well beyond what human labor alone would allow. This caused an exponential growth period for most companies as the drastically lower price of goods initiated by the lower cost of production increased sales dramatically. Soon, most manufacturers were clamoring to have their factories “modernized” as well. For some of the manufacturers, simple steam driven power sources utilizing leather belts enabled them to increase production and minimize human labor. However, a great deal of the manufacturing still required great dexterity and, thus, human labor remained invaluable for those types of processes.
Eventually, however, more complex manufacturing machines were created that required complex control systems to operate. These were burdensome to maintain and control, but they gave their owners the ability to replace human labor with more efficient machines. The complexity of the controls eventually drove the manufacturers to employ computers to facilitate in controlling and monitoring these complex systems. And, in order to control the complex control systems, human interfaces were developed to allow the human labor force to interact with the machines.
Human/machine interfaces (HMIs) or simply user interfaces are important to the successful operation and maintenance of industrial automation devices and equipment. User interfaces provide the essential communication link between operators and automation devices. This link allows operators to, among other things, setup devices, monitor device status during operation, as well as analyze device health. Without such user interfaces, high level industrial automation would be difficult if not impossible to achieve.
These types of interfaces allow operators (i.e., users) to easily interact with manufacturing processes on a real-time data basis. To review historical data, the user must select a different display that typically generates a chart type display of the historical data. Often this includes an x-y Cartesian charting system that the user must interpret to determine what a like parameter value is for a current display. If the display can only display one format at a time, the user must constantly switch back and forth between the displays, often losing track of the desired data point. This type of interfacing creates substantial hardships when attempting to troubleshoot a manufacturing process when problems occur.